Frostbite said:
So err is it a reality? Every two or three weeks I see a scientific article which completely contradicts the one before with new data. It's getting confusing. Can't they just say they don't know? That the implications and calculations are too complicated?
They do say they don't know. At least the scientists doing the footwork.. you know.. the real guys. But then some bonehead pretend scientist takes the data and makes a frightening claim out of it and then some bonehead journalist gets the 'scoop'.
On the large scale, yes, the earth is warming. If you go back 20,000 years ago the earth was mostly covered in ice.
..humans probably didn't cause the end of the ice age.
This is almost precesely where the science ends and the speculation begins.
It is interresting that if you look at global temperature graphs for the last 200 or so years, they show a steap increase in the last 3 decades. The problem with these graphs is they combine data sources.
Certainly our current data on the current temperature this year is the best data we ever had on any global temperature ever. If you go back only a hundred years ago the method of measuring temperature wasnt as accurate, the record keeping wasnt as accurate, and there wasnt all that many samples. Nobody was questing out into remote areas just to set up temperature reading equipment. Basically, we have no clue what the temperature was in, say, Kenya, 100 years ago.
Europe, for example, is cooler now than it is believed it was 100 years ago. The fear mongers will point out any moment now that the temperature in europe isnt a measure of global temperature. They are right. But somehow they think ice core samples give a more accurate measure of global temperature than an actual temperature measurement. Go figure.
The fact is we are confounded by the randomness of weather and temperature. Comparing this year with last year yields very little information about any other years in the past or the future.
The reliability of ice core sample can easily be put into question: What do ice cores say about 1998? They don't say anything about 1998. We can't test the validity of the conversion from ice sample to presumed temperature. But they make this conversion none-the-less because its the best thing they have.
They went through historical records.. but now they've gone through 99.95% of all historical records. They can't squeeze any more reliability out of that data source.
They went through tree rings.. but now they've reduced the margin of error from the tree ring source to +/- .05%. You can't squeeze any more reliability out of tree rings.
So whats a scientist to do? Ice core samples. Pretty soon even ice core samples will be exhausted as far as useful information too. After that who knows where they will look to try to find evidence of past global temperatures.
But they are running down the reliability chain here.. the human records are the most reliable.. tree rings second most reliable.. ice core samples third most.. whats next? the 4th most reliable of course.
